The humans working with NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope—the Curiosity rover’s socially awkward, overachieving cousin whose love life Curiosity cruelly mentions at every family gathering—announced today that there are at least 100 billion planets (Earth inclusive) in the Milky Way. How does the Kepler Space Telescope know this, you wonder? Glad someone is interested in something other than whether Kepler is, in retrospect, glad about the $150 spent on that singles’ Italian cooking class. MSNBC reports:

[NASA scientists] arrived at their estimate after studying a five-planet system called Kepler-32, which lies about 915 light-years from Earth. . . The Kepler-32 planets orbit an M dwarf, a type of star that is smaller and cooler than our sun. M dwarfs are the most common star in the Milky Way, accouting for about 75 percent of the galaxy’s 100 billion or so stars, researchers said. Further, the five Kepler-32 worlds are similar in size to Earth and orbit quite close to their parent star, making them typical of the planets Kepler has spotted around other M dwarfs. So the Kepler-32 system should be representative of many of the galaxy’s planets, scientists said.

In other words, scientists are assuming the properties of this specific planetary system probably exist in the galaxy as a whole. This is an example of deductive reasonin—what? Did you mumble something, Kepler? Oh, it’s actually an example of inductive reasoning? Is that right? Ah, well. Enough science talk! Kepler, meant to ask you something: that Jane Austen reading group—been on a lot of dates since joining? Found your Elizabeth Bennet, ha ha?